skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Very good question. This could not only apply to programmers, but anyone involved in communicating complex issues (medical personnel, engineers, etc).

On a side note, I do not read that many articles about the effectiveness of hiring. It certainly deserves more attention, because the good people in the right places is so important.

Start-up idea: Provide companies with interview questions for specific jobs, and then measure employee success/failure and use this to improve the process.
This submission has only 14 points at this time, and the server is already a smoking crater.

Lesson: Ensure your infrastructure can handle the traffic before you submit links to social sites.
I don't think the corp gets to choose the arbitrator, which essentially invalidates all of your logic on this one.
Quartz steps it up in digital news, design wise
How exactly? (I'm actually curious.)
Stuff Mentors Say: At Least the Guy's Open...
Here's the thing, it is hard. Its hard to filter out the guys who can mention buzz words but push comes to show they are lost and directionless. Technically able in a past position in a different field in a related industry just may not cut it. Plus, the guy has got to want to hustle too, right?
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=3802752155040
Back when I was an undergrad at MIT I was a solder monkey for a group that used a dilution refrigerator with a very similar sort of setup, also trying to use current in niobium loops as qbits. However, IIRC we were only able to reach temperatures in the 100mK range, whereas the article claims this group is using temperatures less than 1mK. So I think they would probably have to be using something on top of the dilution refrigerator to get that low.
My 2.5 year old has been playing with our 1st gen ipad since she could pick it up. We just got one of the original Apple black rubber cases (http://www.amazon.com/Original-Apple-CASE-ZML-MC361ZM-Packag...) and it's survived all the times she's dropped it (only being able to drop it from a height of 2 ft helps reduce impact forces too :)
You're not really disagreeing with the GP.

A real big question, especially in startup-land, is when is a startup no longer a startup? When you offer health insurance? When you're cashflow positive? $1MM/yr? $10MM/yr?

It's really easy to justify the long nights with, "Well, we're a startup." And if you generate enough money with those long nights to KTLO and make sure paychecks don't bounce, it's hard to call it quits. But after N years, the "we're a startup" excuse gets old.
What a terrible article. There's no reference to the actual allegations, not even a link to the original post. Nothing but repetitions of the company's press release.
Human Greenhouse Gas Emissions Traced to Roman Times
No it's not your only hope. Your other hopes are:

- hiring developers that appreciate and obey the conventions, or

- reducing the weight of the conventions.

Simply put, if you have conventions that the developers aren't following, you're organization is dysfunctional in some way. Management should include the team when crafting the conventions, and management should take efforts to give the team time/resources to obey them.
A month with Windows 8
‘Ruined Spanish Fresco Monkey Jesus’ costume makes rounds on Internet
If the game doesn't load in Chrome, try using an incognito window since you're probably a Ghostery user. (Sorry, I swear I had fixed that...)
Can somebody just post the question? Server's aren't responding.
A non-political solution: how Web & AR technologies can help health care now
So uh, what is the question?
Where the 3.6 kernel came from
the public transportation in NYC is great. Finding great cheap apts is like finding a needle in a haystack. Some friends are reading obituaries to find vacant apts. Everything is available within 1 hr commute via public transportation. I would look at a 30-45 minutes commute from your work location. Look at L magazine and Time Out New York and see where your interests are located. Some of the more affordable places are upper manhattan, the upper east side of manhattan and the outskirts of brooklyn and queens. Even Staten Island for some and if your a real homesteader there are some areas in the South Bronx which are getting cool, although very slowly.
What was the question? The site seems to be down and Google doesn't seem to have a cached version yet.
ARPwner - Arp poisoning and dns poisoning tool
Title is incorrect. There is no evidence presented anywhere that any of the drugs were "bad". According to the article, the FDA has claimed that they were "potentially" fake, meaning that they didn't even try to verify that anything was actually fake, or couldn't find anything that was actually fake. If they'd actually verified something as fake, the article would've said so, unless you think they'd fail to boast about that.
While laudable, would open sourcing it be of much use? The really useful part is the service, not so much the code.
For the same reason as clicking a +1 somewhere doesn't make you an active G+ user.
Congrats you guys :-)
What a Unique Selling Proposition Really Means
Does using rebase or squash leave the history in my local repo and "squash" the commits to a single one in the master?

Sorry for basic questions but I'm new to git.
I don't think Gandhi was suggesting people devote their life to working at Apple.
"Hipster racism" is exactly the right word to describe it. Suburban Internet culture is infested with it.
Behind the Scenes With Groupon's Developers, Talent Scout
I'd rather call this a checklist than a cheat sheet. A cheat sheet is a quick lookup for someone who doesn't know what they're doing, whereas a checklist is a quick lookup for someone who does know what they're doing and is humble enough to recognize that even the most capable expert performs better when working off a list.

Related: http://gawande.com/the-checklist-manifesto
Not to mention Linode is the only VPS provider I've seen (and I've seen quite a few) to offer Slackware boxes. For someone who grew up using Slack, this is a huge plus.
As far as I am concerned, Reserved Instances are the way to go, if you consider to get to be be a heavy user. I opened a spreadsheet recently on my own startup idea, and with Reserved Instances Amazon EC2 got very competitive.
If that's been your experience of programming either:

1. You're doing it wrong.
2. You work for some sort of agency / programmer-for-hire outfit where you never work on the same project for longer than a few weeks or months.
Very cute little game. Quite laggy for me. I used Chrome. Also please add Computer players at some point.
Unfit For Office Because She Plays World of Warcraft
Why not just dead bolts with a keypad? I have locks that do that and can be controlled from my phone as well. Sometimes we over engineer things. http://www.kwikset.com/SmartSecurity/Electronic-Locks.aspx
For those that can't see the post, try this - it's a cached version from Instapaper: http://www.instapaper.com/text?u=http%3A%2F%2Frefer.ly%2Fblo...

And we're sorry about the downtime on the blog! We're trying to fix it as we speak and it kind of caught us off guard, because the blog's handled being on the front page of HN all through the summer without a hiccup.
Extremly lagging. Let me guess, Node.js?
Paraphrased: Ask the applicant to explain any topic for 5 minutes to the one interviewing. Then the interviewer will draw a blank face. Talented applicants will ask the interviewer if he understands, less talented applicants will just continue their story.
I made a few active users to interact with one another to progress in FB games.
In Mark Zuckerberg's world, lying is the only way to be yourself
All points certainly apply in all forms of architecture, but some points are more pronounced for particular forms. Even if depicted the same and having the same gravitas, the manifestation of the point varies.

Testing, for example, is obviously paramount in architecting buildings because failures can be horribly expensive and lethal ... but software development is too often prone toward "happy path testing".

Repeating is more problematic in software thanks to Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V, whereas other disciplines have nontrivial time & cost sunk in doing something more than once.

Cost of changes is profoundly different. Since building software is nigh unto free (click "build", wait seconds or minutes) instead of costly (bridges take months or years), those involved are too often seduced by the notion that changes cost nothing.
And then out of that 2.6%, what % of those would be interested in your site even if it is accessible? Diminishing returns, you're right. These other guys are kidding themselves.

You'd be better off worrying about all the Chinese and Indians who can't read your site in English.
I would guess that the 'successful' ones have a higher percentage of sociopaths in their group than the general population.
> Pick any topic you want: a hobby you have, a book you’ve read, a project you worked on–anything.

Hopefully there's more guidance than this, because I feel like I'd freeze up and start "um"ing for five minutes trying to decide the best concept to explain. Maybe this says more about me than the exercise, though...
I definitely have to agree. There is nothing more dangerous than plugging some numbers into R, typing t.test(some_numbers) and proclaiming "Hey look at this great p-value!" without understanding what a p-value is actually telling you.

The most important part of doing statistics right is actually understanding what you're doing, and you're far better off using less powerful tools that you understand than pumping data into fancy functions that you can't really explain.

And more important than just raw number crunching: understanding statistics gives you an improved intuition regarding data. The real value in statistics is the new tools it provides for thinking about problems.

A better solution than "learn R" would be to read through something like Head First Statics and the move on from there to more advanced stuff, and only then start hacking around in R.
(paraphrasing) Choose a topic and explain it thoroughly to me in 5 minutes. Impress me with your clarity and conciseness. Secret bonus challenges: Respond appropriately to my blank stares. Resist my tangential distractions.
Is this a good event to attend
This is excerpted from a longer letter I received. I thought I would pass it on to the list for mature startups looking for sales. Has anyone been listed in the CMO Labs Directory?

Your Next Big New Customer. http://bit.ly/UClBce

The CMO Club Wants YOU!
Are you the next Facebook, Foursquare, or Square?

If your company's product does:

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Our 600+ Chief Marketing Officers want to know. First mover innovative CMO's from companies such as: AON, Walgreens, The Grammys, American Express, Microsoft, and IBM. New CMO attendees just announced from Google, Twitter, Hilton, IBM, GameStop, YouTube, CA and more
It might not have been the author submitting the site
You probably would not get hired.
Saw this in an article about Google from last year: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230491110457644...

About Sergey Brin: "I'm going to give you five minutes," he told me. "When I come back, I want you to explain to me something complicated that I don't already know." He then rolled out of the room toward the snack area. I looked at Cindy. "He's very curious about everything," she told me. "You can talk about a hobby, something technical, whatever you want. Just make sure it's something you really understand well."

Really like this. Covers a lot of bases in a single question, such as curiosity, depth, interpersonal skills, etc.
> How can a non-RFC-compliant email be valid?

甲斐@黒川.日本 is a non-RFC 5322-compliant, but still valid, email address.

Unless you're implying that "valid" === RFC 5322-compliant, in which case the example isn't valid ;)

The best way to validate an email address: send an email to that email address containing a confirmation link. Simple, easy.
Did Facebook Just Admit Its News Feed Algorithm Sucks?
I own the website drugcite.com, I instantly checked it after reading your comment. Seizures of this size really scare me for false positive reasons
Reserved Instances are the next thing we are looking into as well to get our costs down dramatically
So question about this question: do you think this can be trained (and if so, would that training help with job performance) or it's just an inherent characteristic?
Yes, I do plan to be doing this when I will be 50 or 60 or whenever. There's always something new coming up, new platforms, new hardware, new languages, new tools, new problem areas.

For example, I've just learned a new vision algorithm that came up couple year ago that makes one of the vision problems solvable with modern hardware, that opens up the possibility to build solutions for this kind of problem.

We are slowly but surely automating life with software, and we developers are in the middle of it. Why stop just because you've aged?
"Pick a subject that you like and know well. You now have 5 minutes to explain it to me and make me understand what's the most important thing about it is. Go."
The largest societal impact of quantum computing would be to solve the 3d structure of biological molecules from sequence data.

This would be produce an almost immediate revolution in all areas of biotechnology whose implications would be difficult to predict.
Outstanding comment. Especially since you wrote it in 30 minutes.

Very interesting that the best tests still have a low validity.
I didn't have any lag. That was fun, kind of like Bomberman. Nice job!
Hey, OP here! I work at Sift Science, who provided all the facts for this article.

It's been crazy to see how far fraudsters will go to create fake accounts. We've seen people in the Phillipines use Twilio accounts, for example, to fool SMS verification and look like a U.S. user. People scripting the creation of thousands of accounts. People distributing malware via Chrome extensions to take over legitimate users' accounts.

Are any of you out there are dealing with malicious user behavior -- fraudsters, spammers, account takeover, etc.? I'd be happy to answer questions!
TCP.

If you mouseover the tiny, hard-to-see lag meter in your colored square while playing a game you'll be able to see some stats about your connection.
Did they let you know what the inappropriate content was? When your page was restored was the history and content intact? Aren't you concerned it'll happen again?
First, realize that it's not limited liability by itself that insulates companies from the costs of their activity. Even without limited liability, it's just not really illegal to pollute. If your pollution increases my risk of lung cancer by 250%, that is something that has a cost. You can put a dollar value on that statistical probability. But you can't sue over it, because by and large outside of medical malpractice it's nearly impossible to sue for statistical injuries.

Second, individual private suits will never internalize even a fraction of the cost of an externality. When you're sitting in a lab with a computer simulation, you can look at the data and do a good estimate of how many cases of lung cancer can be attributed to the nearby coal plant, but it's nearly impossible to meet the necessary burden of proof with regard to one particular case. Say one factory causes 10% of all the lung cancer cases in one part of the city. The burden of proof in civil litigation is more likely than not. For any given case of lung cancer, it is not more likely than not that the factory was the cause. We don't allow suits based on statistically divisible causality.

Third, enough people won't sue. Partly because most people will have no idea what caused their injuries, but also because a disproportionate number of people injured by pollution are poor. They're ignorant of the legal system and don't have money for lawyers. Lawyers won't take such cases on contingency, because winning is nearly impossible.

Fourth, even when the suits are successful, defendants will pay a fraction of what they should, because they'll pay a team of $1,000/hour lawyers to make sure they do. BP is probably paying Kirkland & Ellis $1,000/minute, and its worth every penny because they're saving billions of dollars.

A smart man once pointed out: "When large numbers of people are involved, the argument for the institution of property rights is weakened and that for general regulations becomes stronger." Ronald Coase, "The Federal Communications Commission," 2 J. Law and Economics 1, 29 (discussing spectrum allocation, but using smoke pollution as an example). Coase is of course one of the luminaries of modern economics, and his theories are the bedrock of conservative political policies.
Exactly what I wanted to point out, especially in the context of his original comment about "choosing your own projects that you like to work on" (paraphrased).

When I wrote that line, it was really not about grandparents or about relative quality of life, but of "circumstances" that one finds themselves in, which then go on to dictate various other things in the person's life as well.

And I think you got it :-)
For Python libraries, I used to shy away from adding extra modules, just because I didn't want to install things in the system Python site-packages.

Then I started using virtualenv for everything, and my life has been much simpler. Now, I have a separate virtualenv setup for each project, and a simple script/Makefile to download and build dependencies. I also add a short shell script to wrap each project that automatically sets up the virtualenv environment and runs the appropriate Python script.

Needless to say, I'm very happy that virtualenv itself has been added to the standard library.
That's exactly the point. The ideal candidate presumably has a number of ideas ready to go - the question is very similar to other interview questions and you should already be preparing to talk about your hobbies and interests. The question ensures the candidate can think quickly, pick a topic they know about, and talk about it coherently. If you can't do that, you're probably not a good fit for the team. Therefore, the question is an excellent interview question: it identifies those people who are very passionate about <something>, who are organized enough to explain it on the spot and who can interact well while teaching.

Now, to the point about you: you should practice this. Being good at talking about your hobbies and interests in technical detail while explaining clearly is an extremely valuable skill. Learn it.
I drink very little and the effect of that on other people is quite marked. It's seems to be seen as some sort of judgement of people if you drink nothing or very little compared to them.
Bloggers: Please Start Accepting Micropayments
Actually, people that think about this for a while are the ones I like the most. The people that race right in without thinking about it tend to perform the worst.

One of the very best candidates I saw actually just wrote their outline on the whiteboard from the start. When I asked them a distracting question they paused a second, looked at the whiteboard, and said "Wait a minute, this will stop us from finishing in 5 minutes. Would you like me to answer this or finish?"
Just a side note - you're probably conflating Perimeter Institute (www.perimeterinstitute.ca) and Institute for Quantum Computing (http://iqc.uwaterloo.ca/). Both are in Waterloo, but it's the latter that is involved in developing quantum computing implementations.
You are right. The ones who stick around have done something right.
I'm just having trouble reconciling "A reader could be excused for having concerns that the author was not an objective witness" with the root comment of this thread. It seems that, in fact, the reader can't be excused for having such concerns.

Maybe tptacek is solely referring to the more vitriolic comments that attempted to dismiss the original poster out of hand. If that's the case, I point to my original comment that there's a difference between "I can't tell if this guy is telling the truth; we need more info" vs. "this guy is lying".
Backfuzz : Multi-Protocol Fuzzing Toolkit
Would you consider adding on screen controls for tablet users? I'd guess this kind of thing is a better fit for mobile than desktop, but is unusable as is under Android Chrome.
Good ideas. I'm thinking a mailto/registration link that'll automatically link the user to the delegated twitter account would probably remove the abuse vector. Thanks for the suggestions!
PandaBot: A friendly, affordable 3D printer
My good friend Kelly is finally rolling out his inexpensive ($800) 3D printer for everyone. Please support the Kickstarter.
That last one would certainly be a lot of fun.

Though thinking about it , I'm not sure it's wise to piss these people off too much since in order to contact you they must have your telephone number which will probably have a 1:1 relationship with your physical address.
The high traffic to the blog post has brought their entire site down.

It's always a good idea to host the blog separately from the site - best is to use a managed solution (tumblr, wordpress.com, etc..)
The point I was trying to make is that if there is no HR department, lines have to be drawn about what behavior is appropriate. Sometimes the topic never comes up and then it becomes an issue when there is a misunderstanding or offensive conduct occurs.

"joking and acting in a way towards other employees that society finds reprehensible"

It really isn't that black and white though. Almost anyone can be offended by any joke or comment, as people come from vastly different backgrounds and experiences. An example is the rape joke made by Notch. Half the people were pissed about it while half couldn't understand why the other half was pissed. It is those kinds of misunderstandings that can create problems in the first place.
+1. Last time I went to Europe I took my olde Nokia E71. The maps function was GREAT - I didn't have data there but I could still navigate the cities I visited without any trouble.
I want you to explain something to me. Pick any topic you want: a hobby you have, a book you’ve read, a project you worked on–anything. You’ll have just 5 minutes to explain it. At the beginning of the 5 minutes you shouldn’t assume anything about what I know, and at the end I should understand whatever is most important this topic. During the 5 minutes, I might ask you some questions, and you can ask me questions. Take as much time as you want to think it through, and let me know when you want to start.
> Peter Thiel said PayPal once rejected a top­-notch engineering candidate because he said during an interview that he liked to play “hoops,” and a PayPal engineer does not play basketball, much less “hoops.”

> Carwoo is a company that’s a little weird, so they ask every interviewee how weird she thinks she is on a scale of 1 to 5. There is a right answer. 3­-4 is the sweet spot ­­a weird person who is self-­aware.

I'm sorry, but these are just bizarre. Company culture is great, but this just sounds cultish and even cargo-cultish.

It strikes me almost as strange that we have anti-discrimination laws for hiring practices concerning races, sexual orientations, religions, etc... but companies are free to discriminate against people who play "hoops" (or don't), or are either insufficiently self-identified "weird", or overly self-identified "weird".

Well you just can't legislate against human stupidity...
Context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm
It's a dupe of a dupe, but worth rereading.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4165474
An asterisk in the title? I think this is unnecessary. For me, it set the wrong tone as I was dismissing things until I knew what the asterisk was.

[Edit] Looks like he removed it. Good call.
Spacechem might be a game with a similar theme: http://spacechemthegame.com/
It can definitely be trained and practiced, so quite clearly it is going to skew towards those that read blog posts about hiring.
True, though in this case it was.